I can date the beginning of this web
site precisely. I was sitting in the bleachers at my step-daughters
graduation from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. It was Saturday
afternoon, May 25, 2006. The temperature was in the high 90s. My wife
was in a wheelchair, having been injured at work a week earlier. I listened
to a speech by the class valedictorian so blandly predictable that it
was almost a parody of its genre. I dont remember what made me
think of identity then, but I did. I took the idea of creating a new
web site from this event.

Identity Independence? It had the
ring of speeches given on the 4th of July. As an American, I demand
my identity independence!, I thought to myself. Were we Americans
not politically and culturally independent? I had my doubts with respect
to the Iraq war. A group of neo-cons with ties to right-wing Israeli
politicians had maneuvered the United states into a war that was becoming
increasingly costly in terms of budget outlays and human lives. And
now people were talking about a war with Iran. A staff person at the
local office of a U.S. Senator confirmed to me that the military option
was still on the table.

Apart from the issue of nuclear capability,
Iran threatened western hegemony in the Middle East. What was so bad
about Irans president Ahmadinejad? He denied the Holocaust. So
America was ready to go to war with a country in some part because its
president denied the Holocaust? Was this an article of faith in our
national religion? Under the U.S. Constitution, arent we supposed
not to have state-established religions? What was happening here? What
was happening, it seemed to me, was that the United States was losing
its political bearings. We were becoming a political and cultural colony
of another nation.

This was also a time when, as a member
of a history association, I received a complimentary copy of a book
from one of this organizations board members who had written a
book on U.S. history in the 20th century. What caught my eye was the
statement that, while Charles Lindbergh was a hero for his solo flight
across the Atlantic, he was Hitlers dupe when it came to politics.
This book stated that Lindberghs organization, America First,
was financially supported by the Nazi government. I was sure that this
statement was untrue. I wrote the author asking for evidence to support
the statement about Nazi financial support. I did receive a response
but it evaded the question. This was another reason to doubt the integrity
of our present culture.

Lindberghs sin, of course, was
that he actively opposed Americas entry into World War II at a
time when American Jews were determined to overthrow Hitler. In hindsight,
their cause was justified. But at the time, Lindbergh and others were
patriotically seeking to spare the nation of the horrors that involvement
in a war with Germany would bring. For his effort, he was viciously
maligned. Even now, sixty years later, we have novelists like Philip
Roth insinuating that the peace-loving Lindbergh was a Nazi. We have
respected historians ready to embellish historical facts to make him
look foolish. More ominously, we have politically powerful groups now
pushing America into war against Iraq, Iran, and the Islamic world.

The task was to regain control of
our own house. From the bowels of ithe American population there needed
to come new leadership that would protect the interests of average citizens,
finding the best in our heritage to rekindle community pride. What was
this community? What was my own identity? As a college-educated person
born and raised in Detroit and now living in Minneapolis, I needed to
find some community somewhere that I could consider my people.
But it was becoming increasingly difficult to find such a group.

With respect to identity, I would
start with the fact that I am an American. Who else is an American?
Since the 1960s, personal identity in the United States has become increasingly
associated with race. Black Americans have a well-established identity
as persons descended from slaves who have fought to secure their dignity
and equality with whites. But I was a white person. If Americas
central story is focused on black peoples fight for racial equality,
what does that make me? As a white person, I would either be part of
an oppressive class dedicated to keeping black people down or, to distance
myself from this dismal image, I would have to demonstrate a John Brown-like
zeal in helping black people in their struggle against repressive whites.

Many whites in my acquaintance have,
indeed, adopted the second posture. It is an article of faith among
many politically active whites that white people enjoy inherent privilege.
They alone can be racist. And so my identity as a white
American becomes someone loaded down with racial guilt. Since the Civil
Rights model is so potent politically, other groups such as feminist
women, gays and lesbians, and immigrants have also loaded me down with
their kind of guilt. If race is a core feature of American identity,
then for me my identity would be a source of shame unless, of course,
I became an advocate for white peoples pride. If I moved in that
direction, however, I would be seen as a white supremacist. Except for
isolated groups here and there, this kind of community does not exist.

American identity can, of course,
be associated with the American government and its history. I could
be a proud American if I served in the Armed Forces and
especially if I was wounded in service of my country. Is that what it
would take to regain a positive identity? I, however, did not serve
in the U.S. armed forces. While I was not a pacifist or conscientious
objector, I have generally deplored the militaristic drift in U.S. foreign
policy. While honoring our nations veterans, I could not honor
the politicians who so lightly sent them off to war. President Bushs
misadventures in Iraq are especially appalling. If my identity were
tied to such activities of the U.S. government, I would be ashamed to
be an American. This bellicose President and his minions have squandered
our national legacy.

But if U.S. politics and our government
are increasingly bad, that does not mean that goodness cannot be found
among the American people. As Americans in search of a positive identity,
we need to look for the good things in our society and in our history.
So, early on, I wrote an article for this web site titled Some
American Identities. How did Americans see themselves at various
times in history? Reviewing the list, I thought that several of these
identities were based on contentious comparisons with other types of
people. My own preference was to find a character type that stood alone
in its achievements. That led me to the creative persons in American
history who were responsible for inventing products, founding industries,
or otherwise contributing to a better society.

Having grown up in Detroit at a time
when the automobile industry was in full bloom, I admired the people
who had built and maintained that industry. Thomas Edison and Henry
Ford would head the list. Others such was William Durant, Walter P.
Chrysler, Charles Kettering, and William S. Knudson were also captains
of industry who had played a pioneering role. In the 1950s, there
were people like C.E. Wilson, Harlow Curtice, Henry Ford II, K.T. Keller,
and George Romney. I honored them all.

America was in love with the automobile,
and executives of the automobile companies were managing a creative
function in society. Even those who put the high-horsepower engines
and giant tail fins on 50s-era cars were displaying creativity. Labor
leaders such as Walter Reuther and Jimmy Hoffa were creatively building
organizations to protect workers in that industry. Ralph Nader was ably
advocating for increased auto safety. They were all part of an America
that was healthy and strong.

Beyond a certain point, however, managerial
leadership tends to lose its creative edge as large organizations perpetuate
what has successfully gone before. So if automobile-company executives
ignore the signs of long-term limitations upon petroleum supply and
build gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks instead of fuel-efficient cars to
boost short-term profit margins, such activity is less to be admired.
Corporate leadership in America seems increasingly self-interested,
quick to reward itself monetarily while sticking with systems and practices
developed by others.

When Wall Street analysts force top
managers to seek increased quarterly earnings above all else and college
professors presume to teach sage business practices, one can assume
that this part of society is in decline. And when writers and academics
malign historical figures such as Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford because
they made public statements that offend certain groups or used their
influence to steer their nation away from war, we have crossed the line
into becoming a nation with a culture of back-biting and lies - not
something on which to base my identity.

So I must ask once again: Who am I?
Who are my people? The quick answer is that I have no people of my own.
I have no real community to which I belong - only the false community
created by government . Alternatively, education would seem to be a
prime creator of identity. But is it not shallow to judge a person by
the four years that he or she spent in college while ignoring the many
years spent before and after that experience? Educational distinctions
are an easy way to sort people out in our society, but they are largely
unauthentic. We need to look more deeply into the human experience.

I created the web site, http://www.identityindependence.com,
almost on a whim. Its focus on personal identity did not lend itself
to an academic discipline which would allow it to be clearly positioned
somewhere in the culture. But the topic had a life of its own. I found
that, among my various web sites, this one was generating comparatively
fast growth in the volume of traffic. I was constantly discovering new
angles to the subject. Therefore, haphazardly, one new page soon followed
another. There was no plan to develop the site in a particular way.
It was spontaneous and fun.

A chart appearing below lists the
pages of the web site and gives the sequence in which they were added.
The first pages, created in early May, were focused on American identity
and its various threats. But I did not want to harp on cultural enemies
or get too heavily into identity politics. If my own identity was threatened,
the solution lay with me rather than with someone else needing to be
defeated.

As a stab in that direction, I wrote
two articles concerned with the psychological effect of education: The
paradoxical disadvantage of education and In search of my
own identity, which was autobiographical. The idea here was that
personal self-esteem depends upon having met a tough challenge whereas,
for many people, society is organized to avoid the possibility that
such challenges will appear. The educational system sets itself up as
a guarantor of success, falsely I supposed.

Toward the end of 2006, quite by accident,
I created a number of pages about my own ancestry and family history.
The identity which one receives through ones parents, either genetically
or culturally, exhibits much of that authenticity that I was seeking.
It started with a computer search through Ancestor.com and was developed
further through a collection of written materials and photographs stored
in a file cabinet.

Then, in February 2007, I began adding
newspaper articles with subjects that pertained to personal identity.
They were proof that the topic has much relevance today. Whether in
regards to the individual search for religion or spirituality or the
narcissistic exhibitions of young women and men on MySpace.com,
identity is important to people, both as individuals and as groups.
Computer web sites lend themselves to reaching out to likeminded individuals,
sharing an identity in common.

The following chart lists the pages
of Identityindependence.com in the order that they were added to the
site. The lefthand column gives an approximate date when each was added.
The next column gives the name of the page file. The page title appears
in the next column. Finally, in the column on the right the name of
the summary page giving its category is listed.

Prior to creating this web site, I had created a
number of others. The most important one was http://www.worldhistorysite.com,
which was originally created in 1999. Traffic has been building on this
site to the point that it now averages more than 1,500 visits per day
(compared with nearly 300 visits for Identityindependence.com). Still
another web site, http://www.goldparty.org, was created mainly in 2005,
suggesting a new approach to politics.

All three web sites contain parallel pages in five
other languages - French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Italian -
in addition to English, the language in which they were written. The
Babelfish language translator on Altavista.com created the pages in
languages other than English. While English speakers are by far most
numerous, the web pages in these other European languages represent
an attempt to break out of the provincialism of our culture and achieve
a certain global reach.

The following table summarizes the volume of traffic
to http://www.identityindependence.com from the summer of 2006, when
the site first appeared, through March, 2007. Visits gives
the number of times the site was entered. Pages gives the
total number of pages that were visited. Hits also counts
graphics and, for that reason, is rather misleading as an indicator
of traffic. Even so, as one can see, there are sharp volume increases
in all three categories.